Archive for July, 2007
Posted by Stropp on
July 22, 2007
I’m going to leave the poll on the new look of Stropp’s World up until the end of the month. That’s just another week. At this stage, I’ve only had six responses, and I’m keen to see if folks like the new look. If you are reading this through an RSS feed, please consider stopping by and voting.
Of the responses I’ve had, most are positive. Of the other two, there is one result saying it doesn’t work in the voters browser. This is something I’d like to correct if possible. Unfortunately, I don’t know what browser is having trouble. If you are finding problems with the site in your browser, can you let me know the details of the browser, operating system, and any other relevant info.
If you don’t like the theme and you think your Granny could do a better job, please let me know what you think is wrong with the theme and I’ll see what I can do.
Your ideas for future poll topics are also welcome. Let me know if you have any.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 22, 2007
I was doing a bit of web surfing earlier today and came across a link to the new developers log for Perpetual Entertainments Star Trek Online. If the article is anything to go by, it looks like this will be one gorgeous game.
As a software developer myself, I’ve always had an interest in how computer games are developed. I’ve done quite a bit of reading of various developer sites like GameDev .net and Gamasutra. And back in the day, I enjoyed reading the various plan files that developers like Carmack used to put up on the net.
Anyway, enough digressing. This entry from Mike Stemmle of Perpetual Entertainment goes into quite a lot of detail about how the developers are creating the worlds that the players will eventually inhabit. He goes through each of the steps of the process of creating a world, and shows some screenshots of the results. The tool that they are using, the World Machine, looks pretty cool too. It looks like it makes the whole process a snap. Just like the Genesis Device, but with no proto-matter. BTW, I’m not a Trekkie, really.
I’m not going to pinch any images from the article to show here. You’ll have to go to the article to see those. But, if you’re interested in seeing how the games that we all know and love are made, you should check this article out.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 21, 2007
This is a collection of links to blog articles that have caught my attention over the past week.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 15, 2007
I didn’t spend a lot of time in World of Warcraft this weekend. In fact I didn’t spend a lot of time in front of the computer at all. Last weekend some friends gave me a gift voucher for EB Games, so rather than put it off for a few weeks, I headed down to my local store on Thursday and bought myself a copy of Forza 2.
The shop was having a sale, so I was able to save about ten percent on the price. I put that saving towards a steering wheel (and pedals) for my 360.
Let me say that this is a very cool game. It’s extremely addictive. Every time I said to myself, ‘just one more race’ it ended up turning into another one, and another one. At 2am on Friday morning (or was that Saturday) I finally went to bed. Lucky I’ve still got a few more days before I start the new job.
The only thing that saved me from a complete weekend of virtual rev-head behavior was an invite over to friends to see the new episode of Dr Who and some old Pink Panther movies.
As I said, this is one cool game. I could spend hours racing, upgrading my cars, and painting them. But it’s the racing that is great. I’m a novice when it comes to racing games. I’ve played some Project Gotham Racing, as well as some of the original Forza, but that’s really about it. I’m not really an expert racing gamer.
I think that’s where Forza 2 shines. It’s not all that hard to get into. I set the skill level to novice to start and won most races (especially after I upgraded the cars.) Now that I’m used to the handling I’ll be putting up the difficulty of the AI. Speaking of which. I’m starting to hate some of those AI drivers. They’re quite aggressive. The number of times I was run off the road just before the finishing line…. grrrr. Curse you M. Rossi!
The only problem I have now is when I’m behind the wheel in real life and see that ‘best line’ down the center of the road and get the urge to put my foot down. I don’t think I’ll get my Subaru to 177 kph down my local street though.
Who cares about violence in games. What about racing games? What effect will they have on the nations young?
Won’t somebody please think about the children!
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 11, 2007
Yesterday I talked about my latest bout with MMOADD and my decision to give World of Warcraft another go by creating a Blood Elf Rogue on a PvP server. I also decided to use Joana’s Horde Guide to get me through the leveling process a bit faster.
I followed the guide fairly closely. I printed it off so that I could keep a record of what I had done and how long it took me to make each level. So far, so good. It usually takes me a hour to make level six whatever race or class I try, and following the guide was no exception. I reached level 10 after approximately three and a half hours.
One thing I noticed was that the guide actually pointed me to a couple of quests that I had missed on my first run at the Blood Elf starting area when I first bought the Burning Crusade. I also reached level 10 a few steps before the guide said I would. Probably those damn Murlocs. Cantankerous little buggers. They didn’t want to drop their heads on the Fish Heads quest. Instead they gave me some extra XP.
The other cool thing was that Joana’s Guide recommended that I quickly kill the boss on the Wretched Ringleader quest grab his head and get away before his adds overwhelmed me. The guide is based on leveling up a Hunter which may actually be faster to level, but as a Rogue I was able to stealth my way behind the boss and pull him and only one of his mates. Too easy. Once I finished off the boss and his minion, I took out the other one.
Once I hit level 10, I checked out the talent trees and logged out. Three and a half hours seems okay to me, but since I’ve never really measured how long it takes to get to level 10 before, I’m not really sure if it is that much faster. I guess the proof will be in how long it takes to get to sixty. Stropp the Hunter took something like 19 days of play time to get to sixty. Hopefully it will be shorter this time.
So far playing a rogue has been a lot of fun. I’ve developed an opening move where I pull the mob with a throwing axe (later to be a bow or gun) and when it gets to me I immediately gouge to stun it. I then quickly move behind and backstab for a lot of damage and two combo points. I then sinister strike once or twice more and perform the finishing move. That is usually is enough to win the fight at this stage. Where it gets interesting is when I get an add or two.
I’ve still got a lot to learn about playing a Rogue though. I did see a decent writeup today on WoW Insider about the Art of the Stunlock. Heh. I start playing a Rogue, and there’s a guide on stunlocking. Excellent timing eh?
I also need to figure out what talent build to go for. My quick look through the available talents when I hit 10 left me wondering which tree is best. They all seemed to offer something that I could use. Assassination, Combat, or Subtlety. Do any you Rogues out there have any advice for me?
Popularity: 11% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 11, 2007
A story on TechCrunch is reporting on figures just released by comScore that the worldwide online gaming community has reached over 217 million players. The study took into account all the sites that provide online or downloadable games, but excluded gambling sites.
It seems that online games are extremely popular. 217 million users is approximately a quarter of the total worldwide online population. It also dwarfs the number of subscribers of the most popular MMO gaming worlds, World of Warcraft and Second Life. The biggest gaming site with over 53 million unique visitors is Yahoo! Games. MSN came in at second place with 40 million unique visitors.
Granted, most of these players play games like Bejewelled and cards, but it goes to show that online gaming is big. Much bigger than what we see with our favorite games, and much of it is casual.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 11, 2007
I think I’ve been suffering from a bit of MMOADD lately. I saw this term mentioned on MMOG Nation today in his post about Dungeons and Dragons Online. I had one of those moments where one tiny little thing in an article stands out above the rest, even though it’s not the focus.
MMOADD describes perfectly where I’ve been in regards to MMO games lately. I want to play, but when I get in to the game, I feel like I want to play something else. I think it also has something to do with being an altaholic. I’m always creating alts and trying something different.
Once again I’m going to try something new. I think part of the problem that I’ve been having with World of Warcraft is that it has felt rather stale. New races only offer new content up through the starting areas, and then everyone has to hit the same areas. Killed one harpy in the Barrens and you’ve killed ‘em all. It’s getting to the point where I’m starting to feel done with WoW.
So. Today I created a Blood Elf Rogue named Stropp on a new server. I haven’t really played a Rogue before so there’s some newness there. And being a Blood Elf means that there is a bunch of content and quests that I’ve never seen before, even if I do feel like I should be in a boy band.
But the big thing is that I’ve created him on a PvP server which is also something I’ve resisted up to now. While I enjoy PvP, I’ve never enjoyed being ganked which seems to be what I’ve experienced in every PvP game that I’ve played. In any case, I’ve decided to suck it up and have a go. At this stage it’s probably the only thing that will keep WoW fresh for me.
I’ve also bought Joana’s 1 – 70 Guide which I’ll be referencing. While I’ve never been much of a power leveler, I figure it might come in handy for speeding through some of the content that I’ve seen before, and let me get to the things I want to get to faster. I’m not sure how the guide will work on a PvP server. I imagine that rapidly completing a series of quests is a bit more time consuming when there are other players trying to kill you.
World of Warcraft won’t be the only game I’ll be playing though. I doubt I’ll give my allegiance to one game like I did with WoW again. There was a period of nearly eighteen months where WoW was the only game I played, and not just MMO games either. There’s a lot of great games out there, and some pretty good games on the horizon that I’m looking forward to.
Now all I have to do is form my Blood Elf Boy Band… hmmm. Stropp’s Life anyone?
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 10, 2007
A couple of months ago I discovered that one of my favorite movie series was being made into a MOG. Frankly, I was a little worried. Movie or TV IPs don’t tend to make good games. A game, especially a massively multiplayer game, requires a lot of freedom that most sequential story telling doesn’t really allow. It’s my pet theory that this is the reason that Star Wars Galaxies had most of its problems. Everyone wanted to be a Jedi in the time period when there simply weren’t any. But that’s another post.
So when I found out that the Pirates of the Caribbean universe was being turned into a MOG, I was a bit confused about how this could be done. After all, for the most part Pirates are at sea. And the sea is usually extraordinarily empty. Not much landscape except for the big blue wobbly. There will be land based content, but how much remains to be seen.
My other concern was the characters that I could create. After all the Pirates of the Caribbean were no Errol Flynns with dentist white teeth and neatly pressed puffy shirts. The movie pirates were all dirty and unkempt, with bad breath and no access to dental floss. If I am to create a character in the PotC MOG, I want him to look good and ugly with bad teeth and rags.
So today I saw that Disney had released a new screenshot of the game. I hadn’t seen any yet, so I headed over to check it out. The pirates are ugly all right, but not in the good way. As the image below shows, they’re ugly in the ten year old graphics engine way. (This picture isn’t the latest screenshot btw.)
I don’t consider myself to be a graphics bigot. Great graphics don’t make a great game. Gameplay is king. But, for an upcoming game based on a series of movies with such great visual effects as Pirates of the Caribbean to have such ordinary graphics is somewhat surprising.
It indicates to me that there isn’t a lot of love and care going into this game. It indicates that it’s more of marketing decision to capitalize on the success of the movies with a game, and since MOGs are flavor of the month due to the success of World of Warcraft, that was the type of game to make.
I mentioned the other day that I thought it was sad that a niche game like Auto Assault was being closed because of lack of players. I also think it’s sad that a great movie property like PotC that could be a top niche massively multiplayer game is not being given the development it deserves. Arrrr.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 9, 2007
It’s nearly 1AM and I’ve spent most of the day on the blog upgrade, and it’s finally done. This will be a quick post before I get to bed, and hopefully not too incoherent.
The biggest changes are the removal of the advertising banners, and the inclusion of a poll widget. Unfortunately the advertising really cluttered up the look and feel of the blog. I’m still considering some link advertising, but it won’t interfere with the look. The best thing about that is that I’ll be able to control what gets advertised. With Adwords I was unable to prevent the gold selling and power leveling services ads. At least they’re gone.
The poll is done using the Democracy plug-in. It has a couple of minor flaws, but seems quite usable. I might go over the code when I get a chance and see if I can make some fixes. In fact you should probably expect to see some tweaking over the next few weeks. I want to implement some different plugins, but it’s getting late.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the theme that I commissioned. I decided it was time to get something done and went hunting for a free theme that would suit the blog and modified it a bit. I’m a little disappointed with that whole situation, but at least I didn’t break the bank on it.
I’ve tested it on Firefox 2, Opera 9.2 and IE7. Aside from the footer in Opera going a bit berko, the theme appears to work in those three browsers. If you are using another browser I’d appreciate you leaving me a comment to let me know if the theme works in your browser. I’d especially like to know how it looks in IE6 since my stats show that most of my readers still use it.
So. Do you like the look? Have a vote on the poll and/or leave a comment. I’d love to know what you think.
Update: Sleep is good. I found a couple of things that I missed last night, and I’ve spent some time today tidying up the categories and the blogroll. I forgot to mention that I also updated Wordpress to the latest version. It all seems good except for one thing. For some insanely stupid reason, the Wordpress Write page no longer Previews the article, you have to open the preview in a new link. I couldn’t believe it. What were they thinking?
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
July 7, 2007
Last weekend while I was trawling around the internet, I came across a free fourteen day trial for Auto Assault. Never one to pass up something free, I decided to give it a go. Mmmmm. Free.
After downloading it and getting the game all set up, I had a bit of a bash for a couple of hours. It’s an interesting game, very fast paced, and running over enemy pedestrians… well that never gets old.
The world wasn’t empty while I was playing, as is normal due to the Oceanic timezone I’m in. There were quite a few players that I came across that first evening, far more than I ever encountered in Vanguard. I was even invited to a group within a few minutes of entering the world. I was able to mow down pedestrians at a frenetic pace while grouping, even if I didn’t know what I was doing. Fantastic.
Two days later, I see an announcement that NCSoft and Netdevil are closing Auto Assault down at the end of August this year after only sixteen months of life.
I’m definitely a little surprised at the announcement considering how short of a time AA has been in operation. The general comment from the developers seemed to indicate that they believed that nothing could be done to revive the game and that it was costing more to keep it going than it was bringing in.
Auto Assault is a different type of game. While I haven’t really experienced all it has to offer, (and won’t now) it does seem to fill a niche. The fact that I saw more players in the newbie area in AA in my crappy timezone than I encountered in several sessions with Vanguard indicates that people like playing it.
The closure of Auto Assault is obviously a business decision for NCSoft. After all they are a business and need to make a profit. But I think it’s a pity that a niche game like Auto Attack is being closed after so short a time.
Popularity: 26% [?]
